Hillary Rodham Clinton

The challenges of change are always hard. It is important
that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this
nation and realize that we each have a role that requires us
to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

The Continuing War on Women

Film to See!

"Made in Dagenham" opens Nov. 19 and is sure to boost Englishmachinist Rita O'Grady into the woman-worker-warrior ranks of Norma Rae and Karen Silkwood.

Opinions

Will Women Ever Achieve Equality?

As a nation we are unable to recognize the obstacles and needs of half the country.

Ninety years ago, a young man named Harry T. Burn, at the insistence of his mother to “be a good boy,” changed his vote from “nay” to “yea,” and the generations-long struggle for women’s suffrage was at last won.

It
is easy to catalog the progress of the last nine decades. Women can
vote, own property, earn a paycheck and keep the money in their own
bank accounts, go to college and play sports there, and yes, run for and
hold elected office. Three of the last four Secretaries of State have
been women. The Speaker of the House is a woman. Three of the nine
Supreme Court justices are women. And let us not forget that a woman
very nearly won the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.

But
-– and of course there is a but –- it is not enough. Because despite
these achievements, control of our economy and our government still
rests almost exclusively within the hands of men. For women to achieve
full equality, they must have a real role in making the decisions that
affect their lives. And that role requires real, and proportionate,
representation -- something 90 years of struggle for equality has yet
to achieve.

I should start by saying that this list
should in no way be seen as an attack on anyone actively involved in
feminist politics, or on the history of the women’s liberation movement.
The fruits of feminism reflect the most successful and long-term social
revolution that human history has ever seen -- this should never be
forgotten. The list is simply a set of personal reflections on some
current dimensions of the struggle, and could equally well be applied to
women in general, as opposed to just those who identify themselves as
feminists.

The 10th anniversary of a landmark UN resolution linking women, peace
and security is a reminder of the importance of having women at the top
table of peace, including in the Middle East. If you review peace
processes in the last two decades throughout the world, you discover
that only one in 50 signatories to peace treaties is a woman, and only
one in every 13 members of negotiating delegations has been a woman. By
one count, during the nearly 20 years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiation
efforts, there have been just five Palestinian women and two Israeli
women in senior negotiating teams, among the many leaders and senior
officials involved.

Why does this matter? Not because the
presence of women at the peace table guarantees that peace will be
achieved. But their absence usually means that certain issues are not
taken into account in peace negotiations, important constituencies are
not heard, and valuable tools for peace-building are not used. Women
(and children ) often bear the costs of conflict in disproportionate
ways, but their contributions to conflict resolution, peacekeeping and
peace-building are grossly unrecognized and underutilized.

In response to the Harvard Business Review blog posting, "Why Stock Price Drops When Women Join the Board," NCRW President Linda Basch submitted the following comment:

Implying that companies rely on women to provide politically-correct ratios rather than valuable skills and approaches is unsupported by evidence. As we found in our report, "Women in Fund Management" , board diversity usually improves stock performance. But we also found that bias can make it difficult for women investment managers to attract investors (Journal of Financial Research XXVI (1), 1-18.). Still, Catalyst , Michel Ferrary at Ceram Business School and others show that women boost the bottom line despite bias. Hedge Fund Research Inc. found that women-owned funds delivered better annual returns than a broader composite of hedge funds over a ten year period. In an economy in need of innovative thinking and new strategic directions, gender bias is something we simply can't afford.

Something challenging and refreshing has begun to emerge in some serious publications. Women are claiming an equal right to exploration and debate, and helping to redefine the 'mainstream', but through gender difference, not through submerging.

Congratulations to 50.50 writer, Ruth Rosen, for writing such a cogent piece about an important subject - the extent to which women's sections or sections devoted to a gender perspective, such as 50.50, are being siphoned off into spaces where they cannot challenge the dominant discourse. In 'Gender Apartheid Online' she lines us up as evidence alongside Salon's Broadsheet, Slate's DoubleXX, PoliticsDaily.com's "Woman Up", IPS Gender Wire and even the New York Times' online series called the Female Factor, and concludes that the "smart, incisive" material to be found there is still, "not on the 'front page' where men might learn about women's lives."

For the sake of a general argument she has missed out some of the nuance of the 50.50 format on openDemocracy by describing it as " a separate section that focuses on news stories about women around the world". That just gives those of us who have been involved in editing 50.50 a rare chance to explain what we're about. 50.50 is a separate section, but all openDemocracy section editors can publish daily on openDemocracy's front page. 50.50 also has a permanent highlights box on the openDemocracy front page, and our articles are regularly chosen by openDemocracy front page editors for the day's top selection.

KATIE COURIC: Let me
ask you a question somebody asked on Facebook. Jaclyn Koch says on
Facebook, “Do [you] think that feminism is still considered a bad word
today? I think the term used to really get a bad rap. But today it seems
things are beginning to level out.” What say you?

GLORIA STEINEM: It’s interesting to me because is
Rush Limbaugh gonna call [Sarah Palin] a “feminazi” like he calls me?
Obviously feminism is winning, otherwise these women wouldn’t be calling
themselves feminists. So the truth of the matter is that, in public
opinion polls more women consider themselves feminists than consider
themselves Republicans, evangelicals, or even Democrats.

I heard a joke the other day about a pious soul who dies, goes to heaven, and gains an audience with the Virgin Mary. The visitor asks Mary why, for all her blessings, she always appears in paintings as a bit sad, a bit wistful: Is everything O.K.?

Mary reassures her visitor: "Oh, everything's great. No problems. It's just ... it's just that we had always wanted a daughter."

That story comes to mind as the Vatican wrestles with the consequences of a patriarchal premodern mind-set: scandal, cover-up and the clumsiest self-defense since Watergate. That's what happens with old boys' clubs.

It wasn't inevitable that the Catholic Church would grow so addicted to male domination, celibacy and rigid hierarchies. Jesus himself focused on the needy rather than dogma, and went out of his way to engage women and treat them with respect.

The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry's Law. The official title ofthis legislation is "Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering," but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard.

This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the White House science adviser to oversee regular "workshops to enhance gender equity." At the workshops, to be attended by researchers who receive federal money and by the heads of science and engineering departments at universities, participants would be given before-and-after "attitudinal surveys" and would take part in "interactive discussions or other activities that increase the awareness of the existence of gender bias."

Every day, we hear about the horrors women endure in other countries: rape in Darfur, genital mutilation in Egypt, sex trafficking in Eastern Europe. We shake our heads, forward e-mails and send money.

We have no problem condemning atrocities done to women abroad, yet too many of us in the United States ignore the oppression on our doorstep. We're suffering under the mass delusion that women in America have achieved equality.

And why not -- it's a feel-good illusion. We cry with Oprah and laugh with Tina Fey; we work and take care of our children; we watch Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice proudly and sigh with relief, believing we've come so far. But we're basking in a "girl power" moment that doesn't exist -- it's a mirage of equality that we've been duped into believing is the real thing.

Because despite the indisputable gains over the years, women are still being raped, trafficked, violated and discriminated against -- not just in the rest of the world, but here in the United States. And though feminists continue to fight gender injustices, most people seem to think that outside of a few lingering battles, the work of the women's movement is done.

It's time to stop fooling ourselves. For all our "empowered" rhetoric, women in this country aren't doing nearly as well as we'd like to think.

We are in the midst of a sexual revolution at work. Thanks in part to the recession, women now hold close to half of all jobs in the economy, mothers are the main or co-breadwinners in two-thirds of American families, and men can claim the dubious honor of being a majority of the jobless. But this is one sexual revolution that hasn't produced much joy of late -- at work or at home. For many, decent wages and economic security remain elusive, and the stress of long hours and job competition has frayed social relationships.

The American workplace is transforming, but women's lives aren't necessarily improving. If we'd known what it was like to have it all, as Lily Tomlin might say, we would have asked for something else.

The answer is not for women to leave the workforce -- as if that were even a remote possibility. But neither is it to resurrect the feminism of the 1960s generation and refight the battles of the past half-century. In recent weeks, the vitriol stirred up by the health-care reform amendment from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) that would restrict insurance coverage for abortion has highlighted the divide among women, many of whom consider themselves both Democrats and feminists, over how to focus feminist efforts. It is painfully clear that consensus in this country on the issue of abortion rights is impossible at this moment.

Feminism today should concentrate on the economy and the workplace -- and on the huge transformations that are needed there to get greater equality and security.